Last month, Seth Godin wrote a post that both illuminates and complicates the realities for Mormon arts and culture. He outlines what he calls the passion/pop curve (make sure you click on the figure in the post to make it bigger so you can actually read it). The curves live on two axes — the first is the number of users/customers/fans. The second relates to content and brand. One one end you have edgy/obsessed and on the other you have vapid/trite. As Godin explains:
That bell curve to the left represents acceptance by the focused/excited/tastemaking community. Those are the people who love microbeers and haute couture and Civil War memorabilia. Like all market curves, there’s a sweet spot. Go too nutsy on us ($90,000 turntables, for example) and even the committed will flee. Go too pop, though, and we’ll avoid you as well.
And…
The bell curve on the right, you’ll notice, is bigger. This is a second market, a bigger marke...
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Ideas for the field: Poetry chapbooks and PDFsFrom: motleyvision.org
Post Date: 2008-03-26 10:18:21
A reader recently wrote in to LDS Publisher asking, “ Is there any hope of selling a poetry collection to any publisher? ”
The answer, of course, is: No.
LDS Publisher puts it more diplomatically, of course:
The only way you’re going to sell a book of poetry to an LDS publisher is if it’s a gift book, a children’s picture book, or part of an anthology (like Especially for Mormons)—but even those are tough sells.
In my comment, I point out that eve...
more Will First Consensus Novel of the Year Mean Changes?From: motleyvision.org
Post Date: 2008-03-24 23:59:58
The news that Coke Newell’s novel On the Road to Heaven won Best Novel at the new Whitney Awards could have interesting implications for the LDS market, at least in my wishful thinking. Since the novel also won the Association for Mormon Letters’ Novel award earlier this year, Newell’s work is clearly the consensus novel of the year, and is the first to take that honor.
But despite the apparent universal honor for the book, the book still doesn’t appear even in Deseret...
more Write-up of a few of the March 2008 AML sessionsFrom: motleyvision.org
Post Date: 2008-03-19 16:14:29
The theme for this year’s AML Annual Meeting was “Scripture as Literature and Scripture in Literature.” This theme provided for the usual wide variety of papers, but the marked emphasis on scripture evoked a different atmosphere from other AML meetings. One attendee I met while I waited to register told me that she had fasted before coming to the conference.   Â
The first session I attended included presenters William Brugger, Donald W. Parry, and Neal Kramer....
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